Military Armament Corp is Back and Making a JSOC 1911
Rebooting a familiar name from the golden age of room brooms with a classic take on a Marine Corps Government model, MAC is back.
But first, some history...
Who was MAC?
The original Military Armament Corporation, or MAC, was located in Georgia where it had been jointly founded in the 1970s by Mitch WerBell of Vietnam SIONICS fame and Gordon Ingram, the father of the MAC-10. Ingram went on to found a second company using his own name in the title while WerBell, dubbed by some as "The Cold War's most mysterious man," passed in the early 1980s.
Using Yesterday's 1911 Tomorrow
This timeframe brings us to a period back in the "600-Ship Navy" days when the Marines were aggressively deployed around the globe to not only counter Soviet and later Russian interests but also serve as a "fire brigade" of sorts when it came to evacuating Americans from unrest overseas, chasing down cartel and pirate types, or engaging terrorists.
However, with a limited budget and a general dislike by some of the standard-issue M9 9mm at the time, the Corps embarked on a program to keep its WWII-era M1911 .45s in operation for its Recon guys with a mix of aftermarket parts to include new slides, barrels, and internal components. As these were in use as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit’s Special Operations Capable missions, it became known as the MEU(SOC) gun.
Similarly, Army commando types working under the Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC ("jaysock"), would continue using greatly modded M1911s until very recently. Retired Green Beret Jeff Gurwitch, a man with first-hand knowledge, recently covered the use of such pistols by U.S. Special Forces post-9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meet the new MAC JSOC 1911
Tim Mulverhill, the guy behind a slew of great Tennessee-based firearms brands (SDS Imports, Tisas, Tokarev, Spandau Arms, et. al) now has resurrected Military Armament Corporation, and the new company's first offering is the JSOC 1911 pistol.
Using a forged carbon steel slide and frame dressed in a classic military gray park with a Tenifer QPQ finish, the Government style M1911A1 runs a 5-inch 416R stainless steel barrel with an 11-degree target crown. It keeps some things "old school" including checkered walnut grips and GI-style vertical slide serrations.
"The new Military Armament Corporation draws its roots from the era of a resurgent American resolve, when we once stood between the massed divisions of the Soviets and our allies in Western Europe, hunted drug cartel kingpins in South America, and being called a communist was the greatest insult imaginable," explained Mulverhill.